1. Jona M. Cabaguio
mjmcabaguio@gmail.com
Subject Code: REMN10R
Subject Title: Research Methods
WEEK 12-13:
3 March 2012

2. Review
Elements of Research Proposal

3. People-oriented research
• Awareness on issues and problems; action
oriented efforts to confront situations
• Build capabilities of people to solve problems
and change their destitute situation
• Cooperation among groups and individuals to
work towards the common good
• Development of the majority who are poor
• Experiential learning which emphasizes local
initiatives and culture

4. Elements of Research Proposal
1. Title
2. Background of the study
3. Statement of the problem
4. Objectives
5. Thesis statement
6. Review of related literature
7. Definition of terms
8. Methodology
9. Analytical framework (theoretical + conceptual)
10. Significance of the study
11. Duration of the study
12. Time table of activities and budget

5. Methodology
1. Research design
2. Study population
3. Sampling
4. Research framework
• Theoretical framework
• Conceptual framework
• Definition of variables
• Data collection plan
• Data analysis plan

6. Outline of Discussion
1. Research framework
• Theoretical framework
• Conceptual framework
• Definition of variables
• Data collection plan
• Data analysis plan
2. Survey

7. RESEARCH DESIGN
Research Framework:
Theoretical and Conceptual

8. Research Frameworks
• Refers to structure, skeleton and
support
• Where your research will be anchored
on
• Two levels:
1. Theoretical
2. Conceptual

9. Research Framework
Theoretical • Conceptual
• Explains the problem (how • Shows the relationship of
the problem emerged) using different specific constructs
an existing theory • (construct: clear definition
• Guide the researcher on of the concept)
understanding the • Makes the abstract
relationship among variables presented by the theory
and how it can be measured simple
• Validates, proves or
disprove, or form new
theory

10. Significance of Theory in Research
• Basis of the discussion of the research
• Explains how the problem emerged
• Provides clear understanding of the variables and
how to measure them
• Provides guide in analyzing data
• Challenge: to find a theory exactly fit or highly
comparable to your specific study
• Recommended: form theoretical framework thru
review of literature

11. Theoretical Framework: sample 1
• The theoretical framework of this study will used the theory of
Historical Materialism.
• Historical Materialism explains that the development of a society can be
traced through the history of the contradictions within a society.
Contradictions is said to have emerged between the ruling and ruled class in
every stage of society of Karl Marx. The said contradiction is rooted on the
mode of production prevalent in a specific stage of society. The mode of
production being mentioned is composed of the forces and relation of
production.
• Historical Materialism explains phenomenon using historical or actual
facts or events that have occurred and is related with the economic aspect of
society, from which all other aspect depend on. The economic aspect of the
society or the mode of production is the base structure of the society that
can explain the superstructure, which consist of laws, norms, cultures,
traditions, and politics. The economic aspect or the base structure is the
basis of the cultural and political aspect of society. The specific mode of
production prevalent in a society is that which dictates or influence the trend,
pattern or type of superstructure.
• The DFA, as a government institution is part of the society’s
superstructure. Applying the theory of Historical Materialism, DFA and its
objective, function and policies is based on what is the prevailing mode of
production or economic aspect of the Philippine society.

12. Conceptual Framework: sample 1
• The evaluation of the study will focused on the stated mission-
vision, objective, function, key strategies, policies and programs,
decisions of DFA
• The mission-vision, objective, function and policies are the
inputs of DFA that would serve as the independent variable of
the study. The achievement of service to the national interest is
the dependent variable while the hypothetical changing
interpretations of the term national interest is the intervening
variable.
• The magnitude by which national interest is served by DFA
will be measured in terms of the inputs of the institution. The
predicted relationship between the independent and dependent
variable is direct. As the inputs are generated, DFA is serving
national interest to a certain unknown degree. The degree by
which national interest is being served will depend on how the
intervening variable will affect the dependent variable. So, the
DFA is serving the national interest if its input is in accordance
with what is the current interpretation of the term “national
interest”.

13. Survey

14. Surveys can be divided into two broad categories:
the questionnaire and the interview
Questionnaires are usually paper-and-pencil instruments that the respondent completes.
Interviews are completed by the interviewer based on the respondent says.

15. Questionnaires
Mail survey:
There are many advantages to mail surveys.
They are relatively inexpensive to administer. You can send the exact same instrument to
a wide number of people. They allow the respondent to fill it out at their own convenience.
But there are some disadvantages as well.
Response rates from mail surveys are often very low. And, mail questionnaires are not the
best vehicles for asking for detailed written responses.
Household drop-off survey.
In this approach, a researcher goes to the respondent's home or business and hands the
respondent the instrument. In some cases, the respondent is asked to mail it back or the
interview returns to pick it up.
This approach have some advantages of the mail survey:
Like the mail survey, the respondent can work on the instrument in private, when it's
convenient.
The interviewer makes personal contact with the respondent -- they don't just send an
impersonal survey instrument. And, the respondent can ask questions about the study and
get clarification on what is to be done.
Generally, this would be expected to increase the percent of people who are willing to
respond.

16. Interviews
Interviews are a far more personal form of research than questionnaires.
Personal interview
The interviewer works directly with the respondent. Unlike with mail surveys, the
interviewer has the opportunity to probe or ask follow-up questions. And, interviews are
generally easier for the respondent, especially if what is sought is opinions or impressions.
Interviews can be very time consuming and they are resource intensive.
The interviewer is considered a part of the measurement instrument and interviewers have
to be well trained in how to respond to any contingency.
Telephone interview.
Telephone interviews enable a researcher to gather information rapidly. Most of the major
public opinion polls that are reported were based on telephone interviews. Like personal
interviews, they allow for some personal contact between the interviewer and the
respondent. And, they allow the interviewer to ask follow-up questions.
But they also have some major disadvantages.
Many people don't have publicly-listed telephone numbers. Some don't have telephones.
People often don't like the intrusion of a call to their homes. And, telephone interviews have
to be relatively short or people will feel imposed upon.

17. Population Issues
The first set of considerations have to do with the population and its accessibility.

18. Can the population be enumerated?
For some populations, you have a complete listing of the units that will be sampled.
For others, such a list is difficult or impossible to compile.
For instance, there are complete listings of registered voters or person with active drivers licenses. But no
one keeps a complete list of homeless people.
If you are doing a study that requires input from homeless persons, you are very likely going to need to go
and find the respondents personally. In such contexts, you can pretty much rule out the idea of mail surveys
or telephone interviews.
Is the population literate?
Questionnaires require that your respondents can read.
While this might seem initially like a reasonable assumption for many adult populations, we know from recent
research that the instance of adult illiteracy is alarmingly high. And, even if your respondents can read to some
degree, your questionnaire may contain difficult or technical vocabulary.
Clearly, there are some populations that you would expect to be illiterate. Young children would not be good
targets for questionnaires.

19. Are there language issues?
We live in a multilingual world.
Virtually every society has members who speak other than the predominant language. Some countries (like
Canada) are officially multilingual. And, our increasingly global economy requires us to do research that spans
countries and language groups. Can you produce multiple versions of your questionnaire? For mail
instruments, can you know in advance the language your respondent speaks, or do you send multiple
translations of your instrument? Can you be confident that important connotations in your instrument are not
culturally specific? Could some of the important nuances get lost in the process of translating your questions?
Will the population cooperate?
People who do research on illegal immigration have a difficult methodological problem. They often need to
speak with illegal immigrants or people who may be able to identify others who are. Why would we expect
those respondents to cooperate? Although the researcher may mean no harm, the respondents are at
considerable risk legally if information they divulge should get into the hand of the authorities. The same can
be said for any target group that is engaging in illegal or unpopular activities.
What are the geographic restrictions?
Is your population of interest dispersed over too broad a geographic range for you to study feasibly with a
personal interview? It may be possible for you to send a mail instrument to a nationwide sample. You may be
able to conduct phone interviews with them. But it will almost certainly be less feasible to do research that
requires interviewers to visit directly with respondents if they are widely dispersed.

20. Sampling Issues
The sample is the actual group you will have to contact in some way.
There are several important sampling issues you need to consider when doing survey
research.

21. Who is the respondent?
Who is the respondent in your study?
Let's say you draw a sample of households in a small city. A household is not a respondent.
Do you want to interview a specific individual?
Do you want to talk only to the "head of household" (and how is that person defined)?
Are you willing to talk to any member of the household?
Do you state that you will speak to the first adult member of the household who opens the door?
What if that person is unwilling to be interviewed but someone else in the house is willing?
How do you deal with multi-family households?
Similar problems arise when you sample groups, agencies, or companies.
Can you survey any member of the organization? Or, do you only want to speak to the Director of Human
Resources?
What if the person you would like to interview is unwilling or unable to participate? Do you use another
member of the organization?

22. What data is available?
What information do you have about your sample?
Do you know their current addresses?
Their current phone numbers?
Are your contact lists up to date?
Can respondents be found?
Can your respondents be located?
Some people are very busy. Some travel a lot. Some work the night shift. Even if you have an accurate phone
or address, you may not be able to locate or make contact with your sample.

23. Can all members of population be sampled?
If you have an incomplete list of the population (i.e., sampling frame) you may not be able to sample every
member of the population. Lists of various groups are extremely hard to keep up to date.
People move or change their names. Even though they are on your sampling frame listing, you may not be able
to get to them. And, it's possible they are not even on the list.
Are response rates likely to be a problem?
Even if you are able to solve all of the other population and sampling problems, you still have to deal with the
issue of response rates.
Some members of your sample will simply refuse to respond.
Others have the best of intentions, but can't seem to find the time to send in your questionnaire by the due
date.
Still others misplace the instrument or forget about the appointment for an interview.
Low response rates are among the most difficult of problems in survey research.
They can ruin an otherwise well-designed survey effort.

24. Question Issues
Sometimes the nature of what you want to ask respondents
will determine the type of survey you select.

25. What types of questions can be asked?
Are you going to be asking personal questions?
Are you going to need to get lots of detail in the responses?
Can you anticipate the most frequent or important types of responses and develop reasonable closed-ended
questions?
How complex will the questions be?
Sometimes you are dealing with a complex subject or topic. The questions you want to ask are going to have
multiple parts. You may need to branch to sub-questions.
Will screening questions be needed?
A screening question may be needed to determine whether the respondent is qualified to answer your question
of interest.
For instance, you wouldn't want to ask someone their opinions about a specific computer program without first
"screening" them to find out whether they have any experience using the program.
Sometimes you have to screen on several variables (e.g., age, gender, experience). The more complicated the
screening, the less likely it is that you can rely on paper-and-pencil instruments without confusing the
respondent.

26. Can question sequence be controlled?
Is your survey one where you can construct in advance a reasonable sequence of questions?
Or, are you doing an initial exploratory study where you may need to ask lots of follow-up questions that you
can't easily anticipate?
Will lengthy questions be asked?
If your subject matter is complicated, you may need to give the respondent some detailed background for a
question. Can you reasonably expect your respondent to sit still long enough in a phone interview to ask your
question?
Will long response scales be used?
If you are asking people about the different computer equipment they use, you may have to have a lengthy
response list (CD-ROM drive, floppy drive, mouse, touch pad, modem, network connection, external speakers,
etc.). Clearly, it may be difficult to ask about each of these in a short phone interview.

27. Content Issues
The content of your study can also pose challenges for the different survey types you might utilize.
Can the respondents be expected to know about the issue?
If the respondent does not keep up with the news (e.g., by reading the newspaper, watching television news, or
talking with others), they may not even know about the news issue you want to ask them about. Or, if you want
to do a study of family finances and you are talking to the spouse who doesn't pay the bills on a regular basis,
they may not have the information to answer your questions.
Will respondent need to consult records?
Even if the respondent understands what you're asking about, you may need to allow them to consult their
records in order to get an accurate answer.
For instance, if you ask them how much money they spent on food in the past month, they may need to look up
their personal check and credit card records. In this case, you don't want to be involved in an interview where
they would have to go look things up while they keep you waiting (they wouldn't be comfortable with that).

28. Bias Issues
People come to the research endeavor with their own sets of biases and prejudices.
Sometimes, these biases will be less of a problem with certain types of survey approaches.
Can social desirability be avoided?
Respondents generally want to "look good" in the eyes of others.
None of us likes to look like we don't know an answer. We don't want to say anything that would be
embarrassing.
If you ask people about information that may put them in this kind of position, they may not tell you the truth, or
they may "spin" the response so that it makes them look better.
This may be more of a problem in an interview situation where they are face-to face or on the phone with a
live interviewer.

29. Can interviewer distortion and subversion be controlled?
Interviewers may distort an interview as well.
They may not ask questions that make them uncomfortable.
They may not listen carefully to respondents on topics for which they have strong opinions.
They may make the judgment that they already know what the respondent would say to a question based on
their prior responses, even though that may not be true.
Can false respondents be avoided?
With mail surveys it may be difficult to know who actually responded.
Did the head of household complete the survey or someone else?
Did the CEO actually give the responses or instead pass the task off to a subordinate?
Is the person you're speaking with on the phone actually who they say they are?
At least with personal interviews, you have a reasonable chance of knowing who you are speaking with. In
mail surveys or phone interviews, this may not be the case.

30. Administrative Issues
costs
Cost is often the major determining factor in selecting survey type.
You might prefer to do personal interviews, but can't justify the high cost of training and paying for the
interviewers.
You may prefer to send out an extensive mailing but can't afford the postage to do so.
facilities
Do you have the facilities (or access to them) to process and manage your study?
In phone interviews, do you have well-equipped phone surveying facilities?
For focus groups, do you have a comfortable and accessible room to host the group?
Do you have the equipment needed to record and transcribe responses?

31. time
Some types of surveys take longer than others.
Do you need responses immediately (as in an overnight public opinion poll)?
Have you budgeted enough time for your study to send out mail surveys and follow-up reminders, and to get
the responses back by mail?
Have you allowed for enough time to get enough personal interviews to justify that approach?
personnel
Different types of surveys make different demands of personnel.
Interviews require interviewers who are motivated and well-trained.
Group administered surveys require people who are trained in group facilitation.
Some studies may be in a technical area that requires some degree of expertise in the interviewer.

32. Constructing the Survey

33. Constructing a survey instrument is an art in itself.
There are numerous small decisions that must be made
-- about content, wording, format, placement –
that can have important consequences for your entire study.
determining the question content, scope and purpose
choosing the response format that you use for collecting
information from the respondent
figuring out how to word the question to get at the issue of
interest

34. Survey questions can be divided into two broad types:
structured and unstructured.
From an instrument design point of view, the structured questions pose the greater difficulties.
From a content perspective, it may actually be more difficult to write good unstructured questions.

35. Dichotomous Questions
When a question has two possible responses, we consider it dichotomous.
Surveys often use dichotomous questions that ask for a Yes/No, True/False or Agree/Disagree response.
There are a variety of ways to lay these questions out on a questionnaire:

36. Questions Based on Level Of Measurement
We can also classify questions in terms of their level of measurement.
For instance, we might measure occupation using a nominal question.
We might ask respondents to rank order their preferences for presidential candidates using an ordinal question:

37. We can also construct survey questions that attempt to measure on an interval level.
One of the most common of these types is the traditional 1-to-5 rating (or 1-to-7, or 1-to-9, etc.). This is
sometimes referred to as a Likert response scale.
Here, we see how we might ask an opinion question on a 1-to-5 bipolar scale
Another interval question uses an approach called the semantic differential.
Here, an object is assessed by the respondent on a set of bipolar adjective pairs (using 5-point rating scale):

38. Finally, we can also get at interval measures by using what is called a cumulative or Guttman scale.
Here, the respondent checks each item with which they agree.
The items themselves are constructed so that they are cumulative -- if you agree to one, you probably agree to
all of the ones above it in the list:

39. Filter or Contingency Questions
Sometimes you have to ask the respondent one question in order to determine if they are qualified or
experienced enough to answer a subsequent one.
This requires using a filter or contingency question.
Filter questions can get very complex. Sometimes, you have to have multiple filter questions in order to direct
your respondents to the correct subsequent questions.
There are a few conventions you should keep in mind when using filters:

40. try to avoid having more than three levels (two jumps) for any question
Too many jumps will confuse the respondent and may discourage them from continuing with the survey.
if only two levels, use graphic to jump (e.g., arrow and box)
The example above shows how you can make effective use of an arrow and box to help direct the respondent
to the correct subsequent question.
if possible, jump to a new page
If you can't fit the response to a filter on a single page, it's probably best to be able to say something like "If
YES, please turn to page 4" rather that "If YES, please go to Question 38" because the respondent will
generally have an easier time finding a page than a specific question.

41. ASK IF NOT IN PAID WORK AT F8a. THOSE IN PAID WORK (CODE 01), GO TO F12.
F9 DWk
Can I just check, did you do any paid work
(of an hour or more) in the last seven days?
Yes 1 GO TO F12
No 2
ASK F10
(Don’t know) 8
F10 PdJobEv
Have you ever had a paid job?
Yes 1 ASK F11
No 2
GO TO F25
(Don’t know) 8
F11 PdJobYr
In what year were you last in a paid job?
WRITE IN YEAR:
(Don’t know) 8888

42. Is the Question Necessary/Useful?
Do you need the age of each child or just the number of children under 16?
Do you need to ask income or can you estimate?

43. Are Several Questions Needed?
This is the classic problem of the double-barreled question
What are your feelings towards African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans?
What do you think of proposed changes in benefits and hours?
You should think about splitting each of the following questions into two separate ones.
You can often spot these kinds of problems by looking for the conjunction "and" in your question.
Another reason you might need more than one If you ask the respondents if they're in favor of
question is that the question you ask does not public TV, they might not understand that you're
cover all possibilities. asking generally.
Sometimes you need to ask additional questions They may not be in favor of public TV for themselves
because your question does not give you (they never watch it), but might favor it very much for
enough context to interpret the answer. their children.
At times, you need to ask additional questions For example, if they say they support public TV, you
because your question does not determine the probably should also ask them whether they ever
intensity of the respondent's attitude or belief. watch it or if they would be willing to have their tax
dollars spent on it. It's one thing for a respondent to tell
you they support something. But the intensity of that
response is greater if they are willing to back their
sentiment of support with their behavior.

44. Do Respondents Have the Needed Information?
Look at each question in your survey to see whether the respondent is likely to have the necessary information to
be able to answer the question.
Do you think Dean Rusk acted correctly in the Bay of Pigs crisis?
The respondent won't be able to answer this question if they have no idea who Dean Rusk was or what the Bay
of Pigs crisis was.
Does the Question Need to be More Specific?
Sometimes we ask our questions too generally and the information we obtain is more difficult to interpret.
For example:
How well did you like the book?
"Not At All“            "Extremely Well."
But what would their response mean? What does it mean to say you liked a book very well? Instead, you might
as questions designed to be more specific like:
Did you recommend the book to others?
or
Did you look for other books by that author?

45. Is Question Biased or Loaded?
One danger in question-writing is that your own biases and blind-spots may affect the wording.
For instance, you might generally be in favor of tax cuts. If you ask a question like:
What do you see as the benefits of a tax cut?
you're only asking about one side of the issue. You might get a very different picture of the respondents'
positions if you also asked about the disadvantages of tax cuts.
The same thing could occur if you are in favor of public welfare and you ask:
What do you see as the disadvantages of eliminating welfare?
without also asking about the potential benefits.

46. Structured Response Formats
Structured formats help the respondent to respond more easily and help the researcher to accumulate and
summarize responses more efficiently.
But, they can also constrain the respondent and limit the researcher's ability to understand what the respondent
really means.

47. Fill-In-The-Blank.
One of the simplest response formats is a blank line. A blank line can be used for a number of different
response types. For instance:
Please enter your gender: Please enter your preference for the following
candidates where '1' = your first choice, '2' = your
_____ Male second choice, and so on.
_____ Female
_____ Robert Dole
_____ Colin Powell
Here, the respondent would probably _____ Bill Clinton
put a check mark or an X next to the _____ Al Gore
response.
This is also an example of a In this example, the respondent writes a number in
dichotomous response, because it each blank. Notice that here, we expect the
only has two possible values. respondent to place a number on every blank,
Other common dichotomous whereas in the previous example, we expect to
responses are True/False and Yes/No. respondent to choose only one.
Then, of course, there's the classic: NAME: ________________________

48. multi-option variable
Sometimes, we supply a box that the person can fill in with an 'X‘.
Please check if you have the following item on the
computer you use most:
modem
printer
CD-ROM drive
joystick
scanner
Notice that in this example, it is possible for you to check more than one response.
By convention, we usually use the checkmark format when
we want to allow the respondent to select multiple items.

49. single-option variable
CARD 12: In politics people sometimes talk of “left” and “right”.
Using this card, where would you place yourself on this scale,
where 0 means the left and 10 means the right?
Left Right (Don’t
know)
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 88
CARD 13 All things considered, how satisfied are you with your
life as a whole nowadays? Please answer using this card, where 0 means
extremely dissatisfied and 10 means extremely satisfied.
Extremely Extremely
dissatisfied satisfied (Don’t
know)
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 88

50. CARD 11: Using this card, please tell me on a score of 0-10 how much you
personally trust each of the institutions I read out. 0 means you do not trust
an institution at all, and 10 means you have complete trust. Firstly…READ OUT
No Comple (Don’t
trust te trust know)
At all
[country]’s parliament?
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 88
the legal system? 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 88
the police? 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 88
politicians? 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 88
the European Parliament? 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 88
the United Nations? 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 88

51. Unstructured Response Formats
While there is a wide variety of structured response formats, there are relatively few unstructured ones.
What is an unstructured response format?
Generally, it's written text. If the respondent (or interviewer) writes down text as the response, you've got an
unstructured response format.
These can vary from short comment boxes to the transcript of an interview.

52. F21 ISCOCo
What is/was the name or title of your main job?
WRITE IN
_____________________________________________________
F22 ISCOCo
In your main job, what kind of work do/did you do most of the time?
WRITE IN
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
F23 ISCOCo
What training or qualifications are/were needed for the job?
WRITE IN
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
F24 NACER1
What does/did the firm/organisation you work/worked for mainly
make or do? WRITE IN
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________

53. One of the major difficulty in writing good survey questions is getting the wording right.
Even slight wording differences can confuse the respondent or lead to incorrect interpretations of the
question.
Can the Question be Misunderstood?
What kind of headache remedy do you use?
• Do you want to know what brand name medicine they take?
• Do you want to know about "home" remedies?
• Are you asking whether they prefer a pill, capsule or caplet?

54. Is the time frame specified?
Whenever you use the words "will", "could", "might", or "may" in a question, you might suspect that the
question asks a time-related question. Be sure that, if it does, you have specified the time frame precisely.
Do you think Congress will cut taxes?
or something like
Do you think Congress could successfully resist tax cuts?

55. A5 NwspTot
STILL CARD 1 On an average weekday, how much time,
in total, do you spend reading the newspapers? Use this card
again
No time at all 00 GO TO A7
Less than ½ hour 01
½ hour to 1 hour 02
More than 1 hour, up to 1½ hours 03
More than 1½ hours, up to 2 hours 04
More than 2 hours, up to 2½ hours 05 ASK A6
More than 2½ hours, up to 3 hours 06
More than 3 hours 07
(Don’t know) 88

56. CARD 49 During the last 12 months, how satisfied or dissatisfied
have you generally been with the way things have been handled in
your work or workplace? Please use this card.
Extremely Extremely (Don’t
dissatisfied satisfied know)
00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 88
CARD 54 AGAIN: And which of these descriptions
best describes your situation (in the last seven days)?
F8a
F8b
in paid work (or away temporarily) (employee, self-employed,
working for your family business) 01 01
in education, even if on vacation (not paid for by employer) 02 02
unemployed and actively looking for a job 03 03
unemployed, wanting a job but not actively looking for a job 04 04
permanently sick or disabled 05 05
retired 06 06
in community or military service 07 07
doing housework, looking after children or other persons 08 08
(other 09 09)
(Don’t know 88 88)

57. One of the most difficult tasks facing the survey designer involves the ordering of questions.
Which topics should be introduced early in the survey, and which later?
If you leave your most important questions until the end, you may find that your respondents are
too tired to give them the kind of attention you would like.
If you introduce them too early, they may not yet be ready to address the topic, especially if it is a
difficult or disturbing one.

58. The Opening Questions
Just as in other aspects of life, first impressions are important in survey work.
The first few questions you ask will determine the tone for the survey, and can help put your respondent at ease.
With that in mind, the opening few questions should, in general, be easy to answer.
You might start with some simple descriptive questions that will get the respondent rolling.
You should never begin your survey with sensitive or threatening questions.
Sensitive Questions
In much of our social research, we have to ask respondents about difficult or uncomfortable subjects.
Before asking such questions, you should attempt to develop some trust or rapport with the respondent. Often,
preceding the sensitive questions with some easier warm-up ones will help. But, you have to make sure that the
sensitive material does not come up abruptly or appear unconnected with the rest of the survey.
It is often helpful to have a transition sentence between sections of your instrument to give the respondent some
idea of the kinds of questions that are coming.
In this next section of the survey, we'd like to ask you about your personal relationships.
Remember, we do not want you to answer any questions if you are uncomfortable doing so.

59. A Checklist of Considerations
 start with easy, nonthreatening questions
 put more difficult, threatening questions near end
 never start a mail survey with an open-ended question
 for historical demographics, follow chronological order
 ask about one topic at a time
 when switching topics, use a transition
 reduce response set (the tendency of respondent to just
keep checking the same response)
 for filter or contingency questions, make a flowchart

60. Q# Topics
A1 –A10 Media; social trust
B1 – B50 Politics, including: political interest, efficacy, trust,
electoral and other forms of participation, party
allegiance, socio-political evaluations/
orientations, multi-level governance
C1 – C28 Subjective well-being and social exclusion;
The European Social Survey religion; perceived discrimination; national and
ethnic identity
D1 – D58# Immigration and asylum issues, including:
attitudes, perceptions, policy preferences and
SOURCE knowledge
QUESTIONNAIRE E1 – E43* Citizen involvement: including organisational
(Round 1, 2002/3) membership, family and friendship bonds,
citizenship values, working environment
F1 – F65 Socio-demographic profile, including:
Household composition, sex, age, type of area,
Education & occupation details of respondent,
partner, parents, union membership, household
income, marital status
Section G Human values scale
Section H Test questions
Section I Interviewer questions

61. The Golden Rule
You are imposing in the life of your respondent.
You are asking for their time, their attention, their trust, and often, for personal information.
Therefore, you should always keep in mind the
"golden rule"
of survey research
(and, I hope, for the rest of your life as well!):
Do unto your respondents as
you would have them do unto you!

62. Preparation
The Role of the Interviewer
Training the Interviewers
The Interview
Opening Remarks
Asking the Questions
Obtaining Adequate Responses - The Probe
Recording the Response
Concluding the Interview